It is exactly two weeks from election day, meaning you have no shortage of fifteen-minute spans in which to fill out your relatively light ballot, sign the envelope, affix a stamp, and VOTE. Need a little help? Wait until tomorrow, when the Mercury‘s endorsement guide comes out. Want a sneak peek? Here are some thoughts on Measure 92, and we’ll have another endorsement up later today. Join the swelling chorus of crass rage and disbelief at our choices!
Want some insight on how to vote in the governor’s race? Dennis Richardson and John Kitzhaber had their final debate last night, and Richardson, in fear and glee, really hammered at the old “corruption” angle. You can watch it here.
You moved here from Indiana two weeks ago. You’re 24. No one expects you to remember the Vanport Flood. But you should read up on it, and then tut-tut officiously when you hear it could happen all over again, if we get sufficient storming. The same ineffectual safeguards that helped doom Vanport are still relatively weak.
And by the way, storm’s comin’.
Irony’s a bit overdone these days. Someone should tell that to the Japanese airbag supplier whose products shoot shrapnel into your neck instead of save your life (possibly, and in Florida especially).
There is a time to take the Ebola threat seriously. Unfortunately, it’s two weeks hence, after the nation casts its paltry ballots. Until then, we watch a game of political football, with cynical calls for unrealistic travel bans and fictitious gripes about insufficient CDC funding.
There are more massacres than we know in the ISIS sphere of influence. Take the little-heralded decimation of a small Syrian tribe that chanced an uprising against the militants back in August. That quiet brutality, at a time when headlines were shouting the United States’ aid to the beset Yazidis, has left some factions wondering whether we’re picking and choosing who gets to keep their heads.
One area of the conflict that’s getting no end of attention, right now, is the Syrian city of Kobane. The Washington Post has before-and-after satellite pictures that give a sense of the destruction and desperation there.
Search your memory, back to before Ebola was the screaming phantasm it is today, and everyone was talking about Ukraine and its serious beefs with Russia/Russian sympathizers. Turns out, those beefs are ongoing, and they’re still serious enough that Ukraine is risking human rights violations by lobbing indiscriminate cluster bombs into its own populous cities. Not an ideal governing strategy.
A bad day for Oscars. De la Renta is dead. Pistorius is going to jail (for like 10 months).
I thought I was ready. No longer the case.
This is so impressive. Until you realize how many times the parrot had to hear that Drowning Pool song. Then it sort of ruins your day.
Whoops, typo there, Dirk, it should read “Join the swelling chorus of rage and disbelief at our crass choices!”